Deus Vult Definition & Meaning

American

Examples

Deus vult American [de-oos voolt] / ˈdɛ us ˈvult / Latin.

1. God wills (it): cry of the Crusaders.

Example Sentences

Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.

Hegseth also prominently displays the words “Deus Vult” on his chest, the battle cry of the first crusade.

From Salon

Pete Hegseth, the Cabinet secretary with control of the U.S. military, has a big tattoo across his right bicep in a Gothic font spelling Deus Vult — the Latin term for “God wills it” — a holy-war motto of Europe’s 11th century Christian Crusades.

From Los Angeles Times

A former member of the Minnesota National Guard, he has a tattoo on his bicep reading “Deus Vult”, a latin phrase meaning “God wills it”, a rallying cry for Christian crusaders in the Middle Ages.

From BBC

Hegseth writes in the book that he was removed from his duty guarding Biden’s inauguration because soldiers scrolled through his social media and spotted a tattoo on his chest of a Jerusalem or Deus vult cross, a historic Christian symbol that in recent years has been appropriated by the far-right.

From Los Angeles Times

For moderate or liberal Catholics concerned about the extreme political divides within their church, these were worrying developments — part of the increasing entanglement of American Catholicism with ever-more right-wing U.S. politics, which over the last five years has included large swaths of the far right using Catholic imagery or appending phrases like "Deus Vult" and "Viva Cristo Rey" to their tweets.

From Salon

Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023

Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.